Seeking long term reliability information

[AltavistaLawn]

I'll refine BobRip's post -- a 5 is really good, a 0 is really bad.

I'd give my 1850 a 1 on that scale -- it's really unreliable compared to all the other cylinder-based devices.

The Kubota M6800 takes oil-changes and grease -- that's it. Never any down time. Whereas I've had all the same kind of issues that AltaVistaLawn is ranting about. Seals, hoses, wheels, tires, overheating, blah blah blah. The "Usual List".

But I love the machine anyway -- I really liked the "open source tractor" notion that appeared in a recent thread. Yep, it's unreliable, but it can be fixed pretty easily, and usually improved along the way so that the issue doesn't happen again.

I couldn't agree more. I've owned a Kioti, then JD 4115, and now a JD 4720...the Kioti gave me a little trouble, but the john Deeres never missed a beat. I ran the 4720 bush-hogging all day long in the hot sun, 8 hours straight with the AC on, the temp hand never went past half way!

Now to the Topic.
Get a "Heavy Equipment Trader" mag. and look at all the skid steers for sale. Most skid steers have a useful life of around 6000 hours before major break downs, and new they are in the 30 to 40K dollar range.

Most decent lawn mowers will turn 2000 hours before the repair costs exceed the cost of depreciation of a new unit.

My 1850 has 360 hours on it and I feel like it will be lucky to make it to 1000!

With that being said the only other replacements would be a Ventrac, or all wheel steer Bobcat 300A. But the Ventrac won't act as a loader, and the Bobcat won't do rough terrain mowing.

 

[RegL]

I couldn't agree more. I've owned a Kioti, then JD 4115, and now a JD 4720...the Kioti gave me a little trouble, but the john Deeres never missed a beat. I ran the 4720 bush-hogging all day long in the hot sun, 8 hours straight with the AC on, the temp hand never went past half way!

Now to the Topic.
Get a "Heavy Equipment Trader" mag. and look at all the skid steers for sale. Most skid steers have a useful life of around 6000 hours before major break downs, and new they are in the 30 to 40K dollar range.

Most decent lawn mowers will turn 2000 hours before the repair costs exceed the cost of depreciation of a new unit.

My 1850 has 360 hours on it and I feel like it will be lucky to make it to 1000!

With that being said the only other replacements would be a Ventrac, or all wheel steer Bobcat 300A. But the Ventrac won't act as a loader, and the Bobcat won't do rough terrain mowing.

I think you should cut your losses and sell that tractor to me, for say, a couple of G's. Just kidding of course, and sorry your having so many problems, but I don't think PT's in general are all that bad. I have 650 pretty tough hours on my 1430 with not much trouble. If we didn't use these tractors for field mowing they would probably be just as reliable as the 40K skidsteer. I think PT should probably use liquid cooled engines in the 18xx tractors as they are used primarily for mowing and you guys seem to have more problems than the rest of us.